The field of Biomedical Engineering has developed into a major component of science and technology. Although biomedical engineering has contributed to important established technologies, new horizons are continually emerging. To highlight these maturing technologies and to define the emerging horizons, funds are requested to partially support a special topic Symposium on Biomedical Engineering to be held in association with the IEEE/EMBS 1988 Annual Conference, November 4-7, in New Orleans. The Symposium will involve national and international academic, medical and industrial research leaders who will focus on scientific and technical advances, applications, limitations, and problems to be solved. The Symposium will thus serve as an educational function to its hundreds of attendees as well as an informational, planning and assessment function of the field. IEEE/EMBS is the largest professional society of biomedical engineers in the world with over 7000 members. It operates as a scientific and technical society of specific bioengineering focus within the broader structure of the IEEE, the world's largest engineering professional organization with approximately 275,000 members. The Society publishes each month an archival refereed periodical, the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (T- BME), which is considered by many authorities to be the best in the field. In addition, it publishes a quarterly magazine, the EMB Magazine, the first such periodical in the BME field. It also publishes each year full papers in its Annual Conference Proceedings and, from time to time, sponsors publication of IEEE Press Books of Special Issues of T-BME on selected scientific and technical subjects. The tenth annual meeting of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) will be held in New Orleans, November 4-7, 1988. This meeting has grown from approximately 100 papers in 18 sessions in 1979 to more than 1200 papers in over 200 sessions in 1987. Approximately one-third of the participants at the 1987 meeting represented foreign countries, confirming that the EMBS meeting has become the major meeting for biomedical engineers in the world. As a part of the forthcoming meeting, a special symposium entitled "Maturing Technologies and Emerging Horizons in Biomedical Engineering" is planned to highlight and focus the major issues confronting this interdisciplinary field. The tentative topics and speakers highlight important emerging fields such as neural networks, artificial intelligence, lasers in medicine and rehabilitation engineering, as well as established, but maturing and evolving fields including implantable cardiac devices, sensory motor systems, and biomaterials. This symposium is planned as the centerpiece of the meeting and will have no other meeting components scheduled at the same time. The format will be similar to that used of the special symposium of the 1986 meeting. Three topics will be dealt with each morning of the meeting. A plenary session will consist of the three speakers who will introduce and survey the topics. Following this plenary session, three parallel sessions, one on each of the topics, will address the issues in greater depth. During the course of the 4-day meeting, 12 subject areas will be highlighted.